This invention relates to a diagnosing apparatus for use in a computer system in diagnosing various failures which might occur in the computer system.
A diagnosing apparatus of the type described, comprises a diagnosing device for individually diagnosing a plurality of failures of a computer system to produce a device output signal which separately represents results of diagnosis of the respective failures. In the computer system, the failures are liable to occur in a plurality of states of operation of the computer system. The failures compel the computer system to suspend operation of the computer system. Such failures are, for example, the so-called exceptions, namely, occurrences of unexpected actions, such as an overflow error, or of expected actions, such as an end of file, that occur at unpredictable instants of time.
In the manner known in the art, the computer system comprises a main storage and a save area which may be prepared in an external storage. When one of the failures occurs, the computer system suspends operation thereof immediately after saving a content of the main storage in the save area as a saved signal. The saved signal is representative of one of the states of operation that the computer system has or had at an instant of occurrence of the failure in question. Therefore, the saved signal will be called an operation information signal. Thus, a combination of the main storage and the save area acts as a signal producing arrangement for producing the operation information signal representative of one of the states of operation that the computer system has or had at an instant of occurrence of each of the failures.
When the computer system suspends operation thereof, the diagnosing apparatus is manually or otherwise activated. When activated, the diagnosing apparatus makes the diagnosing device start diagnosing operation to diagnose the failure by the use of the operation information signal received from the signal producing arrangement.
Although a conventional diagnosing apparatus comprises a diagnosing device for diagnosing the failure in response to the operation information signal, the diagnosing device executes only editing operation to edit the operation information signal into a feature information signal which represents a feature of the failure. The diagnosing device thereby produces the feature information signal as a device output signal which represents a result of diagnosis of the failure. In other words, the diagnosing device carries out only extracting operation of the feature information signal from the operation information signal.
A user of the computer system is therefore compelled to investigate the cause of the failure by analyzing the feature information signal. In addition, the user is compelled to form a counterplan for recovery from the failure and for prevention of occurrence of the failure. The user can not put the counterplan into action before formation of the counterplan.
Inasmuch as the user must form such a counterplan whenever each of the failures occurs in the computer system, much time and a great deal of labor must be consumed whenever the failure occurs. Furthermore, analysis of the failures requires competence of the user. Qualification of the user is therefore restricted to those conversant with the analysis of the failure. Thus, the conventional diagnosing apparatus is incapable of readily diagnosing the failures of the computer system.